Over the few decades, networks have become necessary and essential mechanisms that enable individuals to communicate and share data. Internet Protocol (IP) is a communication protocol that defines how computers, smartphones and other computing devices communicate over one or more networks. These networks may include private networks and/or public networks such as the Internet. In general, an IP address is assigned to each computing device, which serves as an identifier for the computing device and ensures that data meant for a particular computing device is not accidentally routed to another computing device.
Generally, IP addresses can be assigned to computing devices in a network as a static IP address or a dynamic IP address. For static IP address assignment, once a computing device has been assigned an IP address, the IP address remains with the computing device and is not changed for different communication sessions. For a dynamic IP address assignment, however, the IP address is assigned temporarily to the computing device.
Usually, network administrative control is required to avoid IP address duplication, which could cause network disruption. In fact, disjoint or geographically separated networks require unique IP address ranges in order to communicate with each other through routing functions. However, with the emergence of cloud computing, it is becoming more common to encounter networks having identical or at least overlapping private IP address ranges, where these networks include computing devices that are attempting to communicate with each other. For instance, most public cloud providers offer a default virtual private cloud (VPC) address range for different users, and as a result, multiple networks are assigned identical address ranges. A problem arises when a computing device that is part of one network needs to communicate with a computing device that is part of another network, but the private IP address ranges for these networks are overlapping in part or in its entirety. This may occur in a situation where a computing device in a first network is running a cloud-based application and now needs to access a server in another network with identical or overlapping address ranges.